Read in 2016

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

It's RIP season and I've been reading some great mysteries and keeping up with my mystery series'.

On Her Majesty's Frightfully Secret Service by Rhys Bowen, 304 pages
Book 11

Georgiana Rannoch, 34th in line to the throne, may have finally caught Darcy O'Mara, but he's run off again on whatever job it is he has, leaving Georgie alone in Ireland. She visits Queen Mary to get permission to marry a Catholic, and Queen Mary sends her on a mission to again spy on the Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson. (On a side note, I've been watching The Crown on Netflix, and every time David shows up, things get delicious. It really compliments this series!) Georgie heads to Italy, runs into Belinda, her mother appears, someone dies, yadda yadda yadda. A classic locked door murder with everyone in the house, including Mrs Simpson and David, suspects. Georgie to the rescue. I thought this was a nice, tight mystery, and of course, I loved it when Darcy inevitably showed up.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, 496 pages

For fans of Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle, I highly recommend this book. It's actually two books in one, as an author submits his novel, which is a mystery very much like an Agatha Christie mystery. Then, the editor has to solve a mystery based on the book and the author, and becomes the detective in her own real life mystery. Crazy, and so meta! The Atticus Pund mystery itself was good, much like a Miss Marple, small village mystery. Then how Horowitz overlapped solving the real life mystery, which involves solving the Pund mystery, was genius. At times, my head was spinning with how many parallels were happening, and I could not put it down.

Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason, 352 pages I like how Indridason has gone back to Detective Erlunder's beginning days on the force in Reykjavik. This mystery was also two mysteries being solved simultaneously. Erlunder and his mentor Marion are investigating the death of an Icelander who worked on the American Base. This is set during the late 1970s when the cold war tensions are high. At the same time, Erlunder has found a cold case of a missing girl from the 60s. Both are done well, and I'm just happy to be getting more Erlunder.